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There are also two women's basketball leagues, the W.N.B.A. and the American Basketball League, which is two more than there were last year at this time. Since the 1970s, several other women's basketball leagues have folded, including the Liberty Basketball Association, which lasted one exhibition game in 1991 despite--or because of--lower rims, spandex uniforms and a much smaller ball. The A.B.L., which operates in smaller markets during the fall and winter, is known as a players' league; it pays more--the average salary is $80,000 a year--and boasts of having the best players (Olympians Dawn Staley, Teresa Edwards and Katrina McClain). Playing in cities like San Jose, Calif., Richmond, Va., and Columbus, Ohio, the A.B.L. averaged 3,500 fans a game with very little TV exposure. By one estimate, the A.B.L. spent $6 million on salaries this year and $1.5 million on marketing. The W.N.B.A., on the other hand, is spending $15 million on marketing and $3 million on salaries.
Says Gary Cavalli, a co-founder and CEO of the A.B.L.: "We feel that women's basketball is a great sport that deserves to stand on a stage of its own during the traditional basketball season. You really have two totally different strategies here, and I don't know who's right and who's wrong. It could be that both of us are right, and two leagues will survive." Lieberman-Cline, who is 39 and the veteran of three leagues as well as the men's United States Basketball League, decided to sign with the W.N.B.A. after a conversation she had last year with Kevin Costner. The actor asked her, "Will the A.B.L. be here in 20 years?" She said she didn't know. "Will the W.N.B.A. be here in 20 years?" he asked. When she said yes, Costner told her, "You've made your decision. You want to be a part of history."
While both Cavalli and Ackerman maintain that they wish each other only the best, the W.N.B.A. did pointedly leave out the A.B.L. in the history of women's basketball it recently printed in a newsletter. And a W.N.B.A. executive told Time, "There is a lot of pressure to beat the A.B.L. 'We gotta beat 'em, we gotta beat 'em' is the mentality that comes down from headquarters." Reporters who regularly cover the W.N.B.A. suspect the attendance figures are slightly inflated. But there's no doubting the marketing acumen of the league, which uses regular N.B.A. staff members--not when Liberty (or Sting or Mercury) merchandise flies off the shelves and sports sections devote considerably more space to the summer league than they did to the A.B.L. Even Cavalli is sanguine about the promo power of the W.N.B.A. "When they ran those ads in May and June," he says, "I was getting one or two calls a week from people saying, 'Gee, I saw your ad on TV the other night. Looks really great.' I said, 'Thank you. We spent a lot of money on that.'"